THE FULFILLMENT OF THE LAW 79

with al1 of Christ's answers; this method of replying, cwinging far

away from the direction of the question in order immediately to bring
the task the questioner has to perform as near to life as possible, is
simply characteristic of the Christian method.
That simple wise man of antiquity who by encouraging the pursuit
of knowledge doomed paganism, he understood the art of asking ques-
tions; he knew how through his questions to ensnare in the web of their
ignorance those who answered. But the Christian who does not restrict
himself to knowledge alone but to action, is peculiarly able to answer
and by his answer to commit everyone to the task. This was why it was
so dangerous for the Pharisees and the sophists and the hairsplitters
and the dialecticians to question Christ; for the questioner always re-
ceived an answer, but through the answer he also Iearned in a certain
sense far too much; he received an embarrassing answer which did not
cleverly elaborate on the question, but which seized upon the questioner
with divine authority and pledged him to act in accordance with it,
whereas the questioner perhaps had only wished to satisfy his curiosity or
his inquisitiveness or to define his own ideas, while keeping at a distance
from himself and from-doing the truth. How many have not asked,
"What is truth?" and have secretly hoped that it would be a long time
before the truth carne so close to them that it would in that very rnoment
decide what it was their duty to do at once. When the Pharisee "in order
to justify himself" asked, "Who is my neighbor?", he certainly thought
that it would cal1 for a very long investigation, that it would perhaps re-
quire a very long time, and even then perhaps would end with the ad-
mission that it would be impossible to define with absolute accuracy the
concept "neighborY'-and this was exactly why he had asked the ques-
tion, in order to find an excuse for wasting time, in order to justify him-
self. But God takes the wise in their own foolishness, and Christ took
the questioner captive in the answer which included the task.
And so with every answer of Christ. He does not warn against un-
profitable questions by long, tiresome speeches which only breed quar-
rels and evasions, for the long elaborate speech would not be much bet-
ter than the one it is designed to counteract. No, as He taught, so too
He answers with divine authority, for the authority simply consists in
setting the task. The hypocriticai questioner got the answer he deserved,
but not the one he desired. He did not get an answer which would en-
courage curiosity, nor one he could run with, for the reply has the re-
markable quality that when it is spoken it at once commits the individ-
ual to whom it is spoken unequivocally to the task. Even if someone
presumptuously wished to repeat one or another of Christk sswers,
merely as an anecdote, it is no good, it cannot be done; the answer
catches by makmg the one to whom it is repeated responsible-for the